Family: Dallas suspect changed after military service

DALLAS (AP) — Military service changed the Dallas gunman from an extrovert into a hermit, his parents said in an interview excerpt published Monday.

Micah Johnson’s mother, Delphine Johnson, told TheBlaze website in an interview that her son wanted to be a police officer as a child. His six years in the Army Reserve, including a tour in Afghanistan, were “not what Micah thought it would be … what he thought the military represented, it just didn’t live up to his expectations.” According to the military lawyer who represented him, Johnson was accused of sexually harassing a female soldier while deployed.

His father, James Johnson said haltingly and through tears: “I don’t know what to say to anybody to make anything better. I didn’t see it coming.”

The black 25-year-old fatally shot five officers in Thursday’s attack while hundreds of people were gathered in downtown Dallas to protest recent fatal police shootings, and wounded at least nine officers and two civilians.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown clarified Monday where Johnson was killed with a bomb delivered by a remote-controlled robot, saying that it happened on the second floor of El Centro College, not a parking garage as authorities previously described. Brown did not provide more details, including the locations of the negotiations that came before the bomb.

The police chief again defended the decision to use the robot, saying he had “already killed us in a grave way, and officers were in surgery that didn’t make it.”

“This wasn’t an ethical dilemma for me,” Brown said. “I’d do it again … to save our officers’ lives.”

Authorities have said Johnson had plans for a larger assault, possessed enough explosive material to inflict …